Silentium
by tremolux
Summary: Their crumbling city was built on deceit, but they refuse to let each other fall apart like so many castles made of sand.


You know what they say. Hope breeds eternal misery.

But misery's a needy bitch. She loves company.

Aria's lashes flutter open to the sound of muffled sobs and someone invading her bed. And if it were anyone other than Spencer doing such a thing at half past midnight, it would have been a disturbance.

But with Spencer, it's not. It's almost expected.

Anticipated, even.

Because Spencer's dark secret has always been that behind her perfect grade point average and preppy outfits, she's really just a lost child without a place in the world. A damaged soul on track to crack before eighteen. And her veneer is real thin these days. Thin and distressed and fractured. It's evident in the way her bottom lip quivers as she crawls over Aria like a starry eyed tigress in moonlight. It's there in the way her fingers tremble as she touches Aria's face with a sober reverence in spite of her drunkenness.

Aria blinks and 'what's wrong?' is on the tip of her tongue but never makes it past her pearly whites, because Spencer's mouth lands upon hers, stifling the words, and they sink into a kiss that somehow seems as perfectly natural as the way one reaches for the others' arm during a moment of distress.

And it occurs to Aria that this is Spencer in her most beautifully broken hour.

She tastes like vodka and tears and abandoned childhood dreams not yet forgotten. Like a fallen angel who fell for the idea of a grand life with purpose. Nervous but bold, and brimming over with the kind of passion that can only remain tightly buttoned up under cute collegiate blazers for so long.

Within the gazing pools of Spencer's eyes, Aria divines a tragedy in the making. And the petite reader can't help but fall for a story like that. So when the sheer camisole is drawn up over her head, she lets it go, and welcomes with a heavy sigh the tender kisses tagged along her torso.

No words, no clothes, no barriers between them. Their code of silence is upheld within clawed sheets and restrained breath. A mess of bared flesh, bared souls, and tangled tongues, but it feels like sweet salvation. Because behind their shivers there's this unshakable feeling, like the pouring of cement around the epiphany that _it's always been us_ all along.

It was a stupid question, anyway. _Everything_ is wrong.

Everything except their sweaty palms, swollen lips, and hearts beating in tandem.

* * *

They don't speak of it.

To do so seems as silly as saying _last night, we breathed._ They find that it doesn't warrant discussion or attention beyond the acceptance that it just _is._

By day they hold hands under tables, under their friends' noses. By night they meet in darkened bedrooms and in the back seats of cars, lighting each other up in the most secretive of places. Places where phones stay switched off, and 'A' is just another letter in the alphabet.

Their friends eventually get the picture.

Nobody says a word.

* * *

_I love you..._

Scribbled in loopy letters with a fingertip across a bare thigh on a lazy Sunday morning. Flashed in furtive glances and in between breathy sighs. But not vocalized. It would be too easy a temptation to give in to.

They know better, after all they've been through.

Words betray. Promises are made to be broken. Vows are lies waiting to happen, and marriages fade like sun-bleached photographs on the wall. Their crumbling city was built on deceit, but they refuse to let each other fall apart like so many castles made of sand.

The desire to speak gets killed with kisses as one steals the breath from the other before air becomes word. They know that to say it is to give birth to a creation that will eventually consume them, wither, and die.

They've paid the price, learned their lessons. But all of their sacrifices are testament that the only sanctuary in the storm of Aria and Spencer's lives are _Spencer and Aria_ themselves.

Because they've loved each other since before the sand was on the beaches. And when the sun explodes and turns it all into glass, they still will.

As time goes on, they'll find those three words replaced with three others of superior persuasion:

_We are forever_

Always in silence.


End file.
